Before Zen crossed the shores into Japan, the students of the Tendai school would study meditation, as part of their daily practice. Four of them, close friends all, promised one another to observe seven days of silence.
On the first day, no words were spoken, and the students took pleasure in their auspicious beginning. When night came however, the oil lamps grew dim, and the room slowly darkened.
One student, named Hoshin, called out to a servant: "Servant! Attend to the lamps, so that I might better observe our accomplishment!"
The second student was surprised to hear Hoshin speak. "We are supposed to keep quiet," he chided.
"But you also spoke!" declared the third. "You are an idiot!"
"I am the only one who has not talked," concluded the fourth, as he settled into seiza.
A quick shout-out to Kevin, who conceived and illustrated our cool new t-shirt design. You can see samples of his work in our December 2009 and April 2010 newsletters.
And since we’re a classy outfit, let’s do this in style: Merci beaucoup, monsieur Johnston, pour les illustrations belle.
As always, you can pick up your new gear in our snazzy online store.
Editors Note: This is the seventh in an eight part series discussing past seminars at our school. The videos can be found in our multimedia archive. The series can be found under the video tag.
Speaking of Wagener Sensei, these next four videos were recorded in January 2004 at the UNF dojo. (And yes, I know I promised videos of Ed Di Marco Sensei in my last post. I’m showing these a bit out of order in light of our June 19th seminar. You were planning on attending, weren’t you?)
The 2004 seminar was an amazing experience, for several reasons. First, of course, was the expert instruction we received, not just from Sensei, but also from the several talented yudansha visiting us. I have, for example, a clear recollection of a certain bokken kata, which unfortunately is not captured on video. I was training with Linda, a black belt from the University of Florida Aikido Club. The technique exposed my sword arm to ikkyo, which led, imperceptibly, into something altogether different. For me, it was a glimpse into the possibility of Aikido, and was a heady realization for a newly minted third kyu.
Another reason, among many—the party afterwards. Allow me to set the scene. We’re at Buca di Beppo, about fifteen of us, exhausted from training, and crowded around a huge circular table, the kind you might find in some cheesy Arthurian set piece, in something called the Pope Room, which in the context of Buca-land is a cross between the Italian Pavilion at Epcot and the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. We ate and drank and generally cut loose.
In short, we had a blast.
But you’re not reading this for the stories. You came here for this:
And this:
Good stuff. See you on the 19th!